The social business equation

There’s a lot of chatter (pun) about Salesforce, Dreamforce and Benioff’s vision of the ‘connected enterprise’. Most of the themes emerging which have been discussed before are how trust will drive the new social economy. An interesting article from Ray at Constellation states that there are 5 simple rules for the social/ connected enterprise:

1. Trust is the new social currency. Trust drives influence, engagement, and relationships.
2. Social is a cultural shift. Social is not a fad.
3. Building community is the goal. People and organizations seek a sense of belonging.
4. P2P is today’s reality. B2B and B2C are dead.
5. Social business is just good business. Business cannot be conducted without relationships. Social business will be omniscient.

What’s missing to drive this paradigm is the transparency of the engagement and connection. Living in a cynical world you’ll begin to question just why businesses are being friendly and socialising with you. It’s at that critical point that the transparency of the connection and engagement is perhaps the most important factor in the equation, we are now simply beyond handing over our details blindly. We know Big Data is around the corner and will drive analytics to phenomenal levels of intrusion if we let it.Business is no longer just about selling, it creates a connection with people that goes several levels deeper than we’ve been before. And in order to earn that trust that Ray talks about as the social currency of the new world, social business and the connected enterprise need to be transparent about how they want to connect with us, why they want to engage with us, and what will happen when we hand over our hard earned trust.

Transparency is the new currency. Trust is the bill we’ll just be paying for.

Originally posted on BPMRedux and only lightly edited.